novelbest Chapter 1140: The Golden Lie
Chapter 1140: The Golden Lie
Ethan caught every flicker of reaction, and his read on the situation shifted with it.
This hidden world and Elysion were connected. At the very least, they knew what Elysion was—and they clearly had feelings about whatever had happened there.
The older man went quiet for a few seconds, then snapped his sleeve with an irritated jerk.
"What does that world have to do with us?"
Impatience dripped from his voice. The bizarre silhouette behind him shuddered in response.
"And the ones who went there were a bunch of idiots who didn’t know their place. Why are you coming to us?" His eyes hardened. "Get lost. Otherwise I’ll make sure you die without even a grave."
Ethan’s gaze shifted slightly.
That one line gave away more than the man realized.
He hadn’t denied that people went to Elysion. He hadn’t denied those people came from this hidden world.
He’d only tried to cut them loose—separate "those idiots" from "us."
Which meant this world wasn’t a unified faction. The different castles here were probably operating on their own, maybe even at odds with each other.
Ethan was about to press—
But the two men didn’t give him the chance.
The older man turned and walked away. The white-clad fighter followed, retreating toward the castle.
The moment they crossed into the wall’s perimeter, a low, heavy rumble rolled out.
A thick energy barrier rose from the base of the walls.
It climbed upward along the stone first, then spread outward in all directions—swallowing the mountains, the mining zone, the castle itself, and huge swaths of surrounding forest.
In only a few breaths, a region hundreds of miles wide was sealed beneath a semi-transparent dome.
Complex energy patterns crawled across its surface, and deep inside, it linked with the mine’s power—forming a defensive structure that felt brutally stable.
Ethan stood outside the barrier, a hint of confusion settling onto his face.
Their attitude was... off.
They hadn’t explained anything about Elysion. They hadn’t pushed the fight. Instead, they’d locked down the entire mining region like they were trying to avoid a bigger problem.
Ethan raised a hand. Transparent lightning gathered at his fingertips.
He didn’t blast it.
He pressed the power lightly against the barrier and listened to the vibration inside it.
The moment his energy touched, the dome lit with dark, branching lines. The mine’s power pulsed in response, as if ready to disperse any incoming strike across the entire enclosed area.
This shield was strong.
Even Ethan wasn’t confident he could crack it in one shot.
He could force his way in—but that would risk damaging the mine. And the only thing in this world that truly mattered was what lay underground. Ethan wasn’t stupid enough to wreck the resource he came for just to vent anger.
He pulled his hand back, stared at the barrier for a beat longer... then turned away.
...
This hidden world was far larger than it looked from the outside.
Ethan took Feylora and a small escort and made several loops around the surrounding region. The farther they went, the more wrong this place felt—in a way that made his skin itch.
The ambient energy density stayed high everywhere. Deep underground, heavy pulses of ore-vein power kept surfacing in irregular waves. Mountain ranges ran on and on. Forests, rivers, and stony plains were interwoven—and in countless spots, there were clear signs of organized excavation.
Before long, they spotted more than a dozen mines.
And in front of almost every mine...
There was a castle.
None of the castles were exactly the same. Their scale and structure varied.
Some had thick, brutal walls and dense defensive installations—built like they expected war every day. Others were long and narrow, packed with transport rails and mining machinery. And a few were shrouded in strange energy fog, the people living inside them looking nothing like the ones in the other strongholds.
The more Ethan looked, the stronger the spark in his eyes grew.
Every castle radiated a different kind of power.
Some leaned hard into elemental energy. Some felt like pure metal enhancement. Others carried the stench of mental control or spatial traction. Even the people living in each castle were noticeably different—appearance, gear, aura, the way they moved. None of it matched.
This world’s civilization wasn’t a single unified thing.
It felt more like a mining world carved up by multiple factions—each castle holding a vein, each one guarding its own resources. Holda was just one of them.
Ethan stopped on a ridgeline and swept his gaze across several distant castles, already recalculating this world’s value in his head.
If he could take all of it...
Emerald Castle’s resource system would explode again.
Right then, a golden light flared in the sky not far away.
A figure surfaced beneath the clouds.
His whole body gave off an eerie gold glow, his outline slightly unreal inside it, like he wasn’t fully anchored in the same layer of space. The golden energy formed a thin shell over his arms, shoulders, and chest. Every time it flowed, the air around him warped faintly.
"You don’t look like you’re from this world," the golden figure said, his tone slick with mocking amusement.
Just hearing his voice made Ethan’s skin crawl.
The man’s gaze raked over Ethan and Feylora without even pretending to be polite. That gold power rolled outward from him, pressing down arrogantly—testing them with pressure alone.
The moment Ethan saw him, the warmth in his eyes died.
He remembered that golden energy far too well.
Back in Elysion, he’d run into beings like this—same circulation pattern, same smug oppression, same way they turned a battlefield into a headache. Now he’d finally found the source.
Ethan didn’t answer.
Violent power erupted from him. Transparent lightning surged down his arm into his palm, condensing in an instant into a massive energy sphere.
Arcs crawled across its surface. Inside, destruction was compressed to a terrifying density. The air around it collapsed outward, and grass and shrubs on the ground were forced flat in rippling circles.
The golden man’s smile froze.
He hadn’t expected Ethan to attack without a word.
But Ethan’s sphere was already flying.
Wrapped in transparent lightning, it ripped across the sky straight for the man’s chest, dragging a warped trail of electricity behind it. The air split along its path with a deep, rolling boom.
The golden man jerked his hands up. Gold energy exploded out of him and layered into a protective barrier. The shield stacked in overlapping sheets, golden patterns weaving across it, looking solid enough to stop anything.
It only looked solid.
The instant Ethan’s sphere slammed into it, transparent lightning detonated from the contact point. The golden patterns shuddered violently, then a crack tore open straight down the center.
A heartbeat later, the entire barrier blew apart into glittering fragments. Shards of gold light sprayed outward—only to be crushed and erased by Ethan’s lightning.
The golden man’s face changed completely as he shot backward.
Fast.
Ethan was faster.
Lightning burst beneath Ethan’s feet. He flashed through the broken shield and appeared in front of the golden man like a cut in reality. His fingers snapped out and closed around the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe and forcing that gold energy—just as it tried to rebuild—back down into his body.
The golden man went rigid in midair.
Ethan stared at him, voice cold enough to frost steel.
"I was still wondering where you bastards crawled out from."
His grip tightened, slow and deliberate.
"Looks like this is your nest."
The golden man’s breathing turned frantic.
He could feel his "special" gold power being ripped open by the transparent lightning leaking from Ethan’s palm. A shield that almost nobody had ever broken—paper-thin in this human’s hands.
For the first time, real panic hit him.
"Who the hell are you?"
He glared at Ethan, disbelief shaking his voice.
"Our Solaryn energy is the most special power in this world. No one can break our energy barrier—so why can you...?"